It has been a long time since we heard any news on what is going on with Fusion standalone (AKA Fusion for Grown Ups).

We have not had a maintenance release of nearly a year now, there are plenty of bugs that really need to be looked at, I myself have sent dozens of logs in and raised many issues. Personally, I don’t accept the excuse of integration into Resolve is reason enough to have neglected Fusion standalone so badly and it is not good for the existing user base or additional sales.

Fusion is a great product and I felt it was on the cusp of breaking through with Nukes prohibitive pricing and heavy-handed business tactics but it has lost momentum and the I have seen a number of people balk away from Fusion it because they’re unsure about its future.

Serious compositors are not going to use Fusion inside Resolve. It just does not make sense, we don’t need all the additional functionality and overheads, sure Fusion in Resolve maybe be useful occasionally but not to Fusions core user group.

I have spent over 25K on Blackmagic gear in the last 6 years so I feel it’s not unreasonable to ask what the heck is going on. I cannot see how radio silence benefits anyone including BMD.

So BMD, do the decent thing and let us know what is happening, we don’t need it sugar coated, if you’re looking to discontinue then so be it, a couple of sentences and we can all move on.

If others feel the same please raise your voice, maybe we can get a response.

Yes, I'd definitely like to hear more about this. It indeed has been silent for a long time. Whilst I very much like having Fusion integrated in Resolve for certain projects (aside the various, performance and other, issues around it right now), for me, personally, it cannot replace Fusion standalone. As a supplement: Great! As a replacement, at least at this point in time, no. So, yes, I would like to see enhancements & bug (/stability) fixes coming in follow up versions of Standalone.

My Support & sympathies go to your request to BMD. +1Additionally...“Fusion for Full Time Professional Compositors”. Colorist aren’t children. (Yes there are more amateurs but that’s BMDs “expand the base” business model. ) They are moving too fast. DR 15.2 is buggy as hell so say the forums as of its immediate release.

BMD needs to fix what needs fixing. In Fusion Full version. In Resolve (before offering more tools). With the Mini Panel integration (because the sometimes interface doesn’t follow button commands).

BMD... Support & Fix what’s already there. And better support your long term users requests. Please.

That would be very sad. In my opinion an integrated Fusion could never replace the standalone. Having said this, I can see why BMD might want to focus on just a single offering of Fusion since they are now effectively managing two separate Fusions (presumably at great cost to them).

But perhaps even more telling, is BMDs COMPLETE lack of communication and willingness to listen to VFX specialists. Resolve 15 and Fusion wasnt even in Beta or Alpha with the participation with ANY VFX houses, professionals or consultants before becoming "public beta".

BMD releases buggy, unstable, untested and bloated software. Just check how much stuff breaks between releases of Resolve. Its like they`re unable to run process and pixel regression tests.

They are at least consistent in their inconsistencies.

Eyeon and Fusion used to be god damn rock solid. Im looking at you 4.04c, 5.3 and 6.4

michael vorberg wrote:can you give any source or official statement for this?

No official statement. I had a talk with BMD rep few weeks back. during the conversation he said that in 15 only 30% of VFx software is available, in 16 we will club 100% of VFx and we will end fusion.

What if he is right and it happens just like he said, BM has done many incredible things.

If the resolve integrated fusion, furthers its capabilities why would it stop many of you from using it? You can configure Resolve to only open the app you mostly use. If I were you Id wait at least till DR16, I mean unless their is some mission critical capabilities not offered. I'm betting that BM has something grand in mind. Remember That Grant Petty comes from our ranks and knows by experience.

NAB 2018 wrote:Adding Fusion to DaVinci Resolve has been a massive project that will be completed over the next 12-18 months. Customers can get started using Fusion today to complete nearly all of their visual effects and motion graphics work. The standalone version of Fusion will continue to be available for customers who need it.

I understood that development of standalone version will continue. However, BMD said "continue to be available" they never said, "continue development". The Standalone version has not been updated since 15 announcements. The last update is almost a year ago. When I read this thread, I became very anxious.

ricardo marty wrote:If the resolve integrated fusion, furthers its capabilities why would it stop many of you from using it? You can configure Resolve to only open the app you mostly use. If I were you Id wait at least till DR16, I mean unless their is some mission critical capabilities not offered. I'm betting that BM has something grand in mind. Remember That Grant Petty comes from our ranks and knows by experience.

CheersRicardo Marty

Resolve can never replace fusion due to its difference in architecture and design. "Just dont use Fairlight then" isn't a valid argument.

ricardo marty wrote:In 16 we will club 100% of VFx and we will end fusion.

What if he is right and it happens just like he said, BM has done many incredible things.

He isn't. BMD has made no indication that they have any INTEREST in doing so, much less the CAPABILITY to make it so.

Think about it... Resolve is slower, takes longer to load, and uses more RAM than Fusion does. So the only way they could make it 100% is to make Resolve faster and use less RAM. If they COULD do that, why haven't they? They don't say "whoa, Resolve 15 isn't using enough RAM, we want to save that magical RAM reduction until Resolve 16, so we can put that in the press release."

ricardo marty wrote:If the resolve integrated fusion, furthers its capabilities why would it stop many of you from using it?

Says the people who have never done feature film VFX. I'm yet to hear this argument from a SINGLE VFX industry user. That should tell you something.

RCModelReviews wrote:I guess the writing was on the wall when BMD decided that a Fusion dongle would also now work with Resolve (from V15).

The way I see it, this is a very clear signal that Fusion (stand-alone) has probably reached the end of its development life -- albeit it remains a useful tool.

I continue to disagree with this notion. There is another reason why this might be the case. The recent versions of Resolve introduced activation keys as another form of licensing and since BMD hasn't updated Fusion in a year, it might be that they just haven't managed to make it work with both Resolve dongles and keys.

This is not to say that I think Fusion Standalone is still alive. Honestly, at this point, I think it would be a miracle if it is. I hope I would be proven wrong because it would be a huge shame if BMD kills Fusion.

Don't get me wrong. I think the Fusion integration into Resolve is a great (when BMD sorts out all the bugs and issues). But it is great only for the occasional slap comp and the Text+ templates that it provides to Resolve. For anything bigger than that and it becomes useless. The interface itself is so annoying to work with for bigger comps.

I hope BMD can listen to the users and keep Fusion Standalone alive or at least offer a confirmation of its fate.

I hope BMD can listen to the users and keep Fusion Standalone alive or at least offer a confirmation of its fate.

Well with around 1K views in this post in 5 days and 25K views in the Fusion 10 requests topic people are obviously interested, it just appears BMD are not. Post a comment about a Fusion bug in Resolve 15.2 and it will get a response in a day, we have been asking one question for over 6 months with no response.

Its not 'business', its not an oversight, it is either ignorance or arrogance and neither reflect well on BMD.

So once more, I implore Blackmagic to respond even as I said if it is a simple 'we're not sure', there is a large group of customers who you are neglecting.

Grant, I don't know if you ever read the forums but we really would appreciate some information here, I love what BMD are doing for our businesses but this is not a good look.

I'm a Nuke fanboy, so take this for what it is. I'm always looking to improve my workflows, so as an indie filmmaker, I was very interested when I heard of Fusion coming into Resolve. However, I've found that trying to do a shot that involves anything more than 8 or so nodes brings the app to a halt.

I want to see some examples of high end VFX done in the Fusion tab. Shots involving at least 50 or so nodes. From my very limited time with Fusion (inside Resolve), it's not up to the task. Lack of caching control in the Edit tab as well as no saver options other than EXR make it practically usless for high end work. By comparison, I did do a short film in the standalone Fusion a few years ago and it handled what I threw at it just fine. If a Fusion tab is the future, it needs some serious work.

I hope BMD can listen to the users and keep Fusion Standalone alive or at least offer a confirmation of its fate.

Well with around 1K views in this post in 5 days and 25K views in the Fusion 10 requests topic people are obviously interested, it just appears BMD are not. Post a comment about a Fusion bug in Resolve 15.2 and it will get a response in a day, we have been asking one question for over 6 months with no response.

Its not 'business', its not an oversight, it is either ignorance or arrogance and neither reflect well on BMD.

So once more, I implore Blackmagic to respond even as I said if it is a simple 'we're not sure', there is a large group of customers who you are neglecting.

Grant, I don't know if you ever read the forums but we really would appreciate some information here, I love what BMD are doing for our businesses but this is not a good look.

Last time I asked a BMD person about What will happen with fusion 6 months ago, I got this reply "To be decided".

Miltos Pilalitos wrote:Only insanity would make a well informed VFX artist choose Natron instead of Fusion.

I totally agree that, at its current state, Natron is not a viable alternative for Fusion, but I don't think this is what Marc was trying to say in his post.

As messy as Natron is, at least it is open source. This means that, if Fusion was doomed, then it might be a good idea for small studios to push for Natron to improve. Rely on Nuke for a while, but try to get Natron to a better position so it can at least be considered competent enough for at least some serious VFX work.

btw.: If they kill Fusion, they could push the code to Github instead of trashing it.

You are welcome, Marc.

I don't think pushing Fusion's code to Github is something that BMD will ever consider. Even if they kill Fusion Standalone, they will still have Fusion inside Resolve, so they still own that code. Since BMD isn't an open source company, pushing the code of one their products means basically they are just giving away that product completely for free. Honestly, I wouldn't wait for that to happen.

I guess most Fusion users would agree that the integration project of putting Fusion into Resolve does not really work. It is and will proabably remain an illusion that advanced VFX can be done "on the fly" in the middle of some editing and coloring jobs.

It was an interesting experiment and I suggest to keep some Fusion core functionality in Resolve, for instance for titles and to import some 3D objects, but give up the naive idea that there is more one could do. It is not a shame, we all try things and some of them fail. But insisting on this idea will hurt also the future of Resolve.

Instead, it is time to return to the development of Fusion and a refined bridge to Resolve.

We have been using Fusion for 17 years !! Absolutely a fantastic software that can not do the end of Softimage. The integration in Resolve is not currently a valid alternative, it is unstable and Resolve freezes or becomes unusable, even using few effects, also with the best hardware.I sincerely hope that they will fix this.

I am new to Davinci Resolve and have been using it for only about 2 months extensively, however one of the main issues i have is being able to create motion graphics in fusion in real time, and this is not possible with its current performance. I decided a few weeks ago (but only fulltime in the last few days) to try Fusion 9 for a project i want to create which is literally impossible in Davinci.

I have to say Fusion is incredible with performance and the ability to tweek and adjust in real time has made me want to learn this program more. I wish i had known about Fusion a few years ago but its never to late.

I hope to hell BMD keeps maintaining Fusion because to have the fusion in DR preform this well i think is a big ask. But even so i like the whole feel and layout options and everything in Fusion stand alone 100x better than in DR.

RCModelReviews wrote:As my .sig says, I'm still using Resolve 14 so I wonder if some V15 user can tell me whether it still supports the "fusion connect" functionality so as to automatically link through to Fusion 9?.

Yes, this bridge works, I had been using it only yesterday for Resolve Studio 15.2 and Fusion Studio 9

cryptoiskey wrote:I am new to Davinci Resolve and have been using it for only about 2 months extensively,

Would you mind posting your thoughts in the Resolve forum as well? We're reasonably sure nobody from BMD reads this one. You're exactly the audience that Blackmagic thinks they're helping. A voice from someone who isn't a 15-year Fusion veteran may ironically be more persuasive.

RCModelReviews wrote:As my .sig says, I'm still using Resolve 14 so I wonder if some V15 user can tell me whether it still supports the "fusion connect" functionality so as to automatically link through to Fusion 9?

if so then I may finally take the dive to V15 and simply continue to use this feature for my VFX work -- rather than the in-built Fusion (which still seems to be a world of hurt).

Yes it does - You can either use the Fusion page or you can 'Create VFX Connect Clip' which then allows you to open a clip in Fusion (just as before with Resolve 14).

edit - although, having said this, I just tried it in Resolve 15.2 and the rendering of the VFX Connect Clip caused Resolve to crash - not sure what's going on there but it did work with 15.1...

Such is the challenge of working with such a fast-changing (and predominantly improving) product.

Steve Alexander wrote:edit - although, having said this, I just tried it in Resolve 15.2 and the rendering of the VFX Connect Clip caused Resolve to crash - not sure what's going on there but it did work with 15.1...

Damn! I guess I'll put off moving to Resolve 15 for a little longer then

Just one update to this - I tried the exact same workflow on my other machine and the VFX Connect 'Render' worked just fine.

I would say that you should try it for yourself as long as you can do so in a test environment (you don't want 15.2 updating your project database otherwise you can't go back - I guess a backup/restore would work).

Steve Alexander wrote:Just one update to this - I tried the exact same workflow on my other machine and the VFX Connect 'Render' worked just fine.

One thing I note is that you say you have 24GB of RAM in your sig. Are both your machines 24GB or does the one that work have more. I believe V15 of Resolve uses a lot more RAM than V14 did so perhaps it's running out of memory.